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“GOD IS ONE” (Mk. 12:29), even though He is three Persons, and each of Them dwell in perfect Oneness and Unity. So also, it is expected and demanded that those that are in God ought to be one (John 17:21-23), for they are, as Christ said to the Father, “one in US”. Our calling is in the unity of ourselves with God, and thus this results in the unity of one another. We must therefore keep “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. 4:5-6), does empower us to be “a perfect man”, all of us together, in the unity of our nature and indwelling Person, Jesus Christ – “perfect in one” (John 17:23). This unity is attained by each individual Christian’s “perfection”, Eph. 4:12 declares, and when individual Christians maintain perfection, then they will come to corporate “perfection” which is called “the unity of the faith” (Eph. 4:13). This doctrine of unity called “perfection” in Ephesians 4:12 and 4:13 came from the doctrine of Christ in John 17:23, coining the phrase – “perfect in one”. All the “perfect” (Eph. 4:12-16) Christians are unified because they are dwelling in unity with the Spirit of God, and all those who are walking after the flesh are creating the divisions in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 3:1-3). You are “as He is” (1 John 4:17) or “as men” (1 Cor. 3:3) in your walk, and thus your conversation creates unity as He is, or it creates divisions (1 Cor. 1:10, 3:3). Walking worthy of “the vocational calling”, as it is termed in Eph. 4:1, is rephrased in Php. 1:27 as, “Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ”, which Paul says is UNITY, in “one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Php. 1:27). To be perfect is to be, therefore, individually (Eph. 4:12) and corporately (Eph. 4:13) with “no divisions”, that we “speak the same thing”, “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10), but it is all because we are perfect with our God’s Spirit Who is the nature, empowerment, and substance of our oneness.
